


Alice's Island

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: The Animated Series, Constantine (TV), DCU, DCU (Comics), Hellblazer, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Alice in Wonderland References, Angst, Batcave, Batfamily Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Demons, Gadgets, Humor, Literary References & Allusions, Literature, Multi, Plot, Teamwork, Treachery, Villains, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 11:07:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11530941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: An island has risen up out of the sea beside Gotham, and the Mad Hatter has kidnapped the inmates of Arkham Asylum to play with in his own, private Wonderland. As Batman tries to take the inmates to safety, he's going to be forced to make some unlikely allies, if not friends. The Mad Hatter is not himself.This is going to be plot heavy, but there'll be some Batjokes and maybe some Riddlebat in there; there's also going to be some Harley/Ivy, and maybe some other ships. I'll see as we go.





	Alice's Island

It’s been a quiet few months.

All of the big bads have been locked up recently, and it’s left the Bat with little to do – a few weeks ago, the Mad Hatter had broken out of Arkham, but he’s been staying quiet, and he hasn’t been fighting with too many thugs on the streets. The nightshifts have been slow, but on the upside, Bruce has had more time to do worthwhile stuff in the day time: he’s been volunteering with the soup kitchen, working with a kid’s charity on the east side of the city, and in his spare time, looking for any sign of Tetch.

But there hasn’t been one. That is, until today.

Bruce glances up from his breakfast as a news bulletin rings loud from the television, and he watches the screen. Shaky footage from a news helicopter is broadcast from the Gotham news station, and the **BREAKING** label running along the base of the screen declares _MAYOR DECLARES CITY SAFE DESPITE NEW ARKHAM DISASTER_. Arkham Asylum has smoke coming off its half-destroyed buildings in great, black plumes, and the helicopter points its camera at a new, grassy island some ways off, with a brightly built castle on its uppermost hill.

Bruce narrows his eyes.

“In the early hours of this morning, a new island rose from the sea some miles away from Arkham Island: the recently escaped Arkham inmate, Jervis Tetch, has claimed responsibility. Also known as the Mad Hatter, this supervillain has previously wrought chaos in Gotham, but today he claims he’s going straight.” Tetch’s face appears on the screen, his moustache curled at the edges like a pantomime Captain Hook, and his hair doesn’t look greasy, as usual – it’s tied neatly at the nape of his neck, beneath his top hat.

“ _Wonderland has sprouted here,_  
So Jervis Tetch is changing gear:  
We have our villains and our play,  
So the city will have peace today!

 _Just send us monsters, creatures, pests,_  
We’ll keep them for our playful jest,  
So the Asylum is retired,  
And the warden there can now be fired.

 _The Red Queen’s castle is high and bright,_  
And her domain is full of might –  
We want for peace, and only that,   
So Gotham needn’t send its bat.”

There’s something different in Tetch’s voice, too – he’s talking in a deep, resonant tone, nothing like his usual whining grumble, and there’s some kind of shine in his eyes, a copper ring around his iris. Tetch bows his head to the camera, giving a bright smile as he tips his hat, and then he chuckles lowly and softly, turning his head away. Bruce spies ink on his neck, hidden under his collar, but much as he squints he can’t make the symbol out, and it returns to the news anchor in the station.

Dropping his fork, he stands up from the breakfast table, making his way into the corridor with the closest entrance to the Batcave, and Alfred, holding a steaming mug of coffee, looks at him glumly.

“I don’t suppose you’ve finished your breakfast, Master Bruce?” he asks, mildly, and Bruce takes the cup from him, taking a sip and feeling it singe his tongue, leaving a familiar burn on his tastebuds. Alfred shows his disappointment, and he knows full well that Bruce is feeling some kind of thrill, but… That’s life.

“Don’t have time,” Bruce replies, and he flicks the lamp-lever on the wall, dropping down the chute that opens up (it used to be a dumb waiter, but he converted it long ago).

And he doesn’t spill even a drop of his coffee.

**♚** **♦ ♥ ♣ ♠** **BATMAN IN WONDERLAND    ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦** **♚**

“I think that’s about as much as can be done, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, frowning at the screen, even as he types in another few commands: he shakes his head, a frown pulling at his features. Tetch’s neck is shown in high definition on the biggest monitor, but it can’t make any predictions as to what’s hidden underneath the collar: with only one or two lines of the image visible. “It’s a tattoo, and it was made recently – perhaps four or five weeks ago. From what the computer can tell, it’s made of pen ink, done with a, ah, “ _stick and poke”_ technique – the sort of thing one might acquire in prison, or…”

“As an inmate in Arkham Asylum?” Bruce asks, and Alfred nods his head. “And the island itself… You can’t just build something like that overnight. How did he do it? Is there anything on film?”

“Absolutely nothing. Every security camera on the coast has seemingly been wiped clean, as have those on the Asylum’s grounds.” Alfred says, and Bruce sighs.

“Going in blind, then,” Bruce says, and he hates himself for the slight satisfaction the thought gives him. He likes to be in control, likes to strategize in advance, but another part of him, the more _primal_ part of the Bat…

He likes the idea of a challenge.

“Sir,” Alfred says, and Bruce ignores him, pulling his cowl on over his head and making his way down the metal stairs, toward the Batmobile. “Sir! Where are you going?”

“Night shift, Alfred,” Bruce replies, and he slides into the front seat of his car.

Alfred doesn’t bother to ask when he’ll be back.

Gotham is quiet today, the streets empty of the usual fights and shoot-outs and robberies, but the sun is beginning to set over the city, and Bruce knows that that will soon change. He comes to a stop outside of City Hall, and he steps out of the Batmobile: a few of the press gathered on the steps turn to look at him and snap photographs, but he ignores them, gaze remaining fixed on the Mayor behind the podium.

“Mr Tetch released all of the staff at Arkham Asylum, as well as the most unwell of the inmates, to the city’s custody. He harmed no one who wasn’t serving a criminal sentence,” Sharp says, his hands resting on the edges of the podium and his glasses flashing with reflected camera lights as he addresses the crowd. “Would the city of Gotham really have us risk police equipment, time, the lives of our boys in blue, just to save some career criminals who have taken countless lives? I think not.”

Bruce sets his jaw, and as the crowd disperses, he makes his way towards Jim Gordon and steps inside with him. Gordon’s gaze is cast downwards, his mouth a thin line, and Bruce watches him for a long few moments, taking in his expression.

“This isn’t right,” Bruce says in the voice of the Bat, a low growl, and Gordon sighs.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “I know, Batman, _shit_ , I know.” Gordon turns away from him, his hands shoved into his pockets, and in the next room, Bruce can hear the distant noise of Harvey Bullock yelling at the Mayor, and the Mayor yelling back. They know it’s wrong – they all know it’s wrong. Even Harvey Bullock knows it’s wrong, and he’s Gotham born-and-raised, with gutter muck and tainted blood running through his veins, and he’s angry enough to yell at Mayor Quincy Sharp.

But not angry enough to make him do anything.

And Gordon actually _is_ angry enough, but he’s outnumbered, powerless. Gordon’s voice is quiet and resigned as he offers Bruce what reasoning he can muster together, even though it is plain he doesn’t believe a single word.

“Even if we were to send our people in – if I could convince them to give me even _one_ helicopter, even a damned speedboat with three guys shoved on the back of it, do you think we could fight them? He has the worst scum of the city as his prisoners, Batman – if I walked into Jervis Tetch’s new territory and tried to save any of them, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Two-Face, Penguin, Riddler… Do you think any of them would _let_ me?”

“It’s not about whether it’s hard, Gordon,” Bruce replies smoothly, and he leaves City Hall. He feels Gordon’s stare on the back of his neck as he leaves, but he doesn’t look back. He gave the city a chance.

Now it’s time for him to take his.

When Bruce returns to the Batcave, Dick and Tim are waiting for him. Dick is hanging upsidedown from one of the railings, idly juggling with the two halves of his baton, leaving blue streams of electricity jumping between his hands; Tim is sprawled in the office chair, his feet up and rested on the computer counter, and he scrolls through pages on an iPad.

When Bruce steps out of the Batmobile, they both look at him.

“We’re coming with you,” Dick says.

“No,” Bruce retorts, and he walks past Tim, picking up ammunition and a few experimental Batarangs from behind the computer monitors, putting them into his tool belt. Tim’s hand touches Bruce’s arm, but Bruce barely feels it through the armoured leather of the suit. “It’s too dangerous.”

“We’re superheroes too, ya know,” Tim says, confidence ringing in the sound( _a little voice in the back of Bruce’s head says,_ So was Jason, _but he doesn’t voice it, and he does his best not to listen to it_ ), and Bruce shakes his head. He picks up his Shock Gloves, feeling their adjusted design, and he pulls them on. “We can help you.”

“There’s something off about Tetch,” Dick says. He’s perching on the railing now instead, no longer dangling down like one of the bats Bruce has to take such care to ensure don’t overpopulate his cave, and Bruce turns to look at him. “Bruce… I don’t like it. He’s like a new man: you can’t tell me you don’t know there’s something wrong here.”

“There is something wrong,” Bruce agrees. “I’m going to fix it.”

“What if it’s a trap?” Tim says. “Clayface could be faking being Tetch – all of Arkham would rain down on you, they could— they could kill you, Bruce. What if it’s the Joker? What if—”

“You shouldn’t have called them, Alfred,” Bruce says, cutting through Tim’s tirade, and Alfred steps from the shadows of the elevator shaft, his white-gloved hands clasped neatly in front of him. He hears a _shhh_ of static to his left, and then Barbara appears on the screen, leaning back in her chair as she faces the web cam.

“What about me, Bruce? Should he have called me?” He looks between her on the screen, then looks to Tim, to Dick, to Alfred. Bruce thinks about Jim Gordon in the Gotham City Hall, wanting to do something but hopelessly outnumbered, and he scowls.

“Oracle,” Batman says, and she sits to attention on the screen. “Use my visor and keep an eye on me as I land. Analayse as we go, and if I can get a view of Tetch, I want you to run analysis on his physical make-up, and on that tattoo. Nightwing, Red Robin, I want you to take the Batsub and ready the brig: I’ve been making use of some of Freeze’s cryotanks, and any inmate I pass onto you should be frozen and placed in one of the tanks. That way, they can’t cause any trouble – they’ll be unconscious. Rendezvous with the GCPD as soon as you have the first thug on board, and alert Arkham Asylum that they’ll be getting their inmates back and that they should ready some holding cells.” Dick and Tim jump into action immediately, racing past Bruce: Dick revs the engine of his bike as he drops it down onto the Batsub’s upper deck, and Bruce wonders who’ll win the fight over who gets to be captain.

Probably Tim.

“I couldn’t let you do it alone, sir,” Alfred murmurs. Bruce looks into his butler’s face, and Alfred looks right back at him, and he says, “I’m not one for unwarranted fears, Master Bruce… But I used to have nightmares of Wonderland, as a young child.”

“That’s not why you told them,” Bruce says.

“No,” Alfred agrees. “Good luck, sir.”

 **♚** **♦ ♥ ♣ ♠** **BATMAN IN WONDERLAND    ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦** **♚**            

Wind whistles past his ears as he freefalls from the Batwing, dropping down in a stream-lined dive to the edge of the island, and he feels his finely-tuned form relax into it, into the torrential _feeling_ that runs through his veins at the idea of a _fight_ – after so _long_.

Bruce Wayne has a problem.

But he’s not going to worry about it tonight.

He spreads out his cape a little above the ground, and he drops heavily onto the ground, feeling the shock in his muscles, but he withstands it. He always does. Bruce comes to a stand, and he looks out over the island: it’s bigger than Arkham, maybe five or six miles across, but something about its dimensions seems unreal, unnatural.

Bruce steels himself, and he begins to walk over the grass. Despite the dark night, the green of it is illuminated by the moon, and he feels like he’s walking on a computer screen, the colour of it is so vibrant. The island is uncomfortably silent, and he hadn’t been able to build a map from up in the Batwing – around it, there’d been a haze of fog that only the castle had poked out of, and the Batwing hadn’t been able to penetrate it.

The hill isn’t too steep, and when he meets his summit, he’s met with a view of the island. On the hill opposite him, a few miles away, there’s a red-brick castle built up that disappears into the cloud of fog above his head, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way there. There’s nothing to grapple onto, and he senses an electric tension in the air.

He takes a Batarang from his belt, and then he throws it forwards, watching it sing through the air: it’s only gone twenty metres when a bolt of blue lightning jumps up from the ground, letting out a loud screech of metal, and then it drops down.

“Oracle?” Bruce says.

“Yeah, well… I wouldn’t try gliding through it.”

“Thanks,” Bruce says dryly, and he scans the terrain closest to him. On the other side of the hill, there’s a stone wall built of the same unnaturally red brick as the castle on the horizon, but there’s a break in the wall, leading ahead to straight hedges. “Was there a maze in _Alice In Wonderland_?”

“There is at Disneyland.” Bruce presses his lips together, staring into the distance for a second or two. “You’re making that face, aren’t you? Like you’re on _The Office_ and you’re looking into the camera?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Bruce mutters, and he begins to walk down the grassy knoll, towards the maze’s entrance. He’s stiff as he makes his way toward the wall, crossing over the threshold: the hedge maze is bright with candle-lit globes that hover, as if magnetized, perhaps six or seven feet above the hedges, which are maybe fifteen feet high themselves.

He is cautious as he makes his way forwards, and when he comes to the first T junction, he stops short. He takes a controller from a pocket, grabbing hold of one of his remote control Batarangs, with a camera set within a gyroscope so it can stay steady, and he leans back to throw it.

“I think that’s cheating, you know,” Oracle says in his ear, and Bruce throws a standard Batarang first, checking to see how low the lightning structure comes before he throws the remote control one. The screen is small, but the bright lights are helpful, and he takes in as much as he can from the maze. He’d expected to see traps or thugs lying in wait, but there’s nothing of the kind – there’s just row upon row of confusing, twisting bushes.

Until, that is, the Batarang comes to the centre.

Bruce frowns, making it brake slightly in the air, and he stares at the screen: laid out on a huge mushroom, still as a corpse, is the Riddler. There’s blood on his face, sticky and dark on his chin, and he’s wearing a blue suit instead of his own.

Maybe he’s dead already: Bruce starts running.

There are traps in the maze, it turns out: he slides under suddenly moving blades and leaps over bursts of fire, dodging hissing spouts of acid, but it’s invigorating more than anything else, and he skids to a stop when he gets to the centre of the maze, grabbing his Batarang and shoving it into a pocket as he walks up to Riddler. The mushroom is soft and thickly padded, as if it’s made of mattress, but Bruce ignores that, focusing on feeling for the other man’s pulse.

It's there, but it’s thready.

“Nygma,” Bruce says, patting the side of his face: looking him over, he can’t see any sign of internal damage, but there’s heavy bruising around his neck, and a black eye is blossoming on his left side. Riddler comes awake with a gasp, grabbing hold of Bruce’s arm. He’s only wearing one of his gloves, and its torn in the middle. He looks around with wild eyes, holding tightly to him, and then he looks at Batman.

There’s fear in Riddler’s eyes, but it fades fast, and he sets his jaw.

“You came to save us, then,” Riddler says, his voice hoarse. He’s been screaming. “Anyone’d think you had some kind of complex, Batman.”

“What’s happening here, Nygma?” Bruce demands, and Riddler leans forwards, coughing hard and spitting blood onto the ground. For a second, Bruce is tense, but then he sees the cut inside Riddler’s lip – not internal bleeding, then, just a bitten inner lip. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Oh, shut up,” Nygma snaps at him, and he tips his head to the side, making an audible crack come from his stiff neck. “Don’t _threaten_ me, you big lummox. I’m not scared of you.” Bruce is quiet for a few moments, watching the other man, and then Nygma says, “It’s not Tetch, you know. I don’t know what that thing is, but it isn’t little Jervy. He’s got _magic_.”

“Magic? How?”

Riddler stands up on shaky legs, and he looks around for his hat, but he obviously doesn’t see it. How long has he been here, spread out on this stupid mushroom, Bruce wonders? A few hours? A day? “Aren’t you meant to be the genius, Batman?” Riddler laughs haughtily,  and then he cracks his knuckles.

There are two exits from the central part of the maze, and Nygma looks between them before asking, lowly, “Which one is the way out?” Bruce shouldn’t let him go – he should knock Riddler out, carry him out to the Batsub, but there isn’t time – he’ll just have to tell Dick or Tim to come and grab him.

Bruce tips his head to the right. “That one.”

“Great,” Riddler says, and he makes his way to the left. Bruce grabs him by the collar of his shirt, dragging him back.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Going to Wonderland,” Riddler growls, struggling in Bruce’s hold. “You think that little upstart is getting away with this, with that _stupid_ literary obsession of his? I’m going to _kill_ him.”

“No,” Bruce says. “You’re going back to Arkham, or you’re staying here.” Riddler opens his mouth to retort, but from over the hedges, there’s a sudden scream, high-pitched and feminine, and it’s close.

He drops Riddler on the ground, and he takes off.

It figures that the bastard follows on his heels.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, hope you enjoyed that! Check [this link](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/post/160853818533/request-commission-information) out if you’re interested in making a request. I love requests, so please feel free to send them in! Let me know what you think, and please feedback! <3


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